Nathaniel and I are a little overexcited about getting inside the airplane so we can finally make airplane noises.  I keep reminding him we have to put the seat in first.  Looks like we are getting closer to that goal.

I had already drawn all the cut lines and bend lines on the seat, so I double-checked them, cut the holes and bent it on my homemade sheet metal brake.

While I had the bottom of the forward fuselage removed, I decided to polish it.  Since only insane perfectionists will ever see it closer than 200 feet away (while laying down on the hot ramp under the plane), this might be the only polish job it ever gets.  I heard that corn starch helps with removing the black residue, so Nathaniel and I gave it a try.  Works pretty good.

Nathaniel’s paper towel is still pretty white, but he was trying pretty hard.

It seems like he found a loose bolt, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t supposed to be any bolts right there.  With the two of us working on this now, we should get the plane finished in no time.

I drilled and countersunk holes for the bolts on the top of the forward fuselage longerons.

Dad helped me align the aluminum channel on the floor of the fuselage. The two center aluminum channels were too close together and sandwitched between two aluminum angle extrusions.  This prevented us from being able to use the pilot holes in the channel as guides to drill into the extrusions.  This situation seems to be a “feature” of the lowered seat modification.  It would have worked great had I not already riveted the extrusions in place.  I ended up drilling one out to get access.  This was awkward and I ended up breaking a drill bit in the process.

I’ve been spending a lot more time under the fuselage drilling into the spar tunnel, seat support, forward fuselage/rear fuselage skin overlap, etc.

Here are a bunch of the parts I have been working on set in place.  The part with the clamp and the piano hinge is where the bottom of the seat attaches.  I have begun to pilot-drill that and cleco it into position.

I haven’t taken a picture of it yet, but I also built the elevator push-rod idler.

I have pilot drilled and attached the forward fuselage bottom, stainless steel firewall, and the spar tunnel.  The forward fuselage is beginning to feel very solid.

Started attaching the forward fuselage sides.  I got an Park Tool TW1 torque wrench to help with some of the bolts.  This is a lot easier to use and smaller than my clicker-style wrench and great for these bolts.  I used fishing line (notice the fishing reel hanging off the front left longeron) to check that the longerons are straight and a laser line to double-check.  I believe the next step is to attach the bottom to help further line everything up, but I believe it is pretty close as it rests now.